Those who broke the boy: The Sons of Charlemagne Book One

by Richard Hathway

  I was stunned. I was also feeling something else. I didn’t know what it was back then but I do now. I was feeling aroused. A fiery, dirty kind of arousal that us disconnected souls feel when they recognise the crazy in someone else. It’s not a sexual arousal, it’s deeper than that. It’s like a wonderful, painful embrace, two oily souls mixing and tearing at each other all at once. It all happened in an instant. I knew I was home. I smiled at her. She smiled at me. We didn’t need anything else. We knew.

  “I killed a cat a while ago,” I began, “don’t know why, just did. I was walking home from school and there was this cat sitting on a wall. I felt this overwhelming urge to pick it up and smash it against the wall. This thing, this creature inside me that is always kicking to get out couldn’t be stopped that day. I can usually stop it, I can talk to it and calm it but not that day. I did it. I picked up the cat and held it by its middle and smashed its head against the wall. I can still hear the crack of the skull if I think about it. The voice whispered thank you as I dropped the body and walked on. He’s been telling me since that it felt good to do it and he’s right. It did feel good. It felt so good. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to kill that bastard either, but I know I’m willing to find out.”

  Sally nodded at me, stood and offered me her hand to help me up. I took it and she pulled me to my feet.

  “Let’s go have some fun.” I said as I gave Sally the business card and we started towards the phone box near the water tower.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  We walked with purpose and confidence. If we were in a movie we’d have had long coats billowing behind us in the wind as we moved in slow motion, our faces fixed with that thousand-yard stare heroes get in the last act when they save the day. We would be striding forward through the hail of bullets, focused on nothing but saving the weak and bringing down the evil. As it was we weren’t in a movie, there were no bullets, no billowing coats, just the two of us walking to a phone box. We walked back around the tree line towards the road side where, next to the public toilets, a red phone box stood. Sally opened the door and we both squeezed in to the small space. I handed her the business card and, fishing in her jeans pocket for a coin, Sally dialled the number and held the receiver out between us so we could both hear the exchange. The number rang three times before we heard the click of the call connecting. Sally pushed the money into the coin slot and we made first contact.

  “Good morning.”

  I was slightly taken aback, for some reason I had assumed the voice would have a German accent. I guess it was a product of reading about the Franks and every villain in every movie being German or Russian that I just assumed he would be too. He wasn’t. His accent was a clean, crisp English. It wasn’t aristocratic or plumy but neither did it have any regional twang. It was just normal, polite, bland, forgettable. We had decided that Sally would do the talking.

  “We need to meet.” Sally said into receiver calmly. There was a brief pause.

  “Order number please.” Came the reply in that ordinary voice. Sally and I exchanged a brief look of confusion before she raised her eyebrows in recognition. Sally flipped over the business card in her free hand.

  “16354298.” She said. The line fell silent for a few seconds.

  “Please repeat the order number.”

  “16354298.” Sally repeated with a frown. There was another few seconds of silence.

  “I will be with you in two hours.” The line went dead. Sally shrugged and replace the receiver. We stepped out onto the street.

  “Well we’ve got his interest.” Said Sally.

  “And two hours to figure out where he’s going to meet us and get there.” I replied.

  “It must be the house where the girl was killed.” Sally said. “If we assume that he has records of all the slave trades and the number refers to the girl then he knows where she was kept. The only people that would know that are The Sons of Charlemagne and the owner of the slave so he must be going to the house. We need to get there.”

  “O.K,” I said, “we need to get the bus back to Coombe Dingle. We can get one from over there.” I pointed across the road to a large wooden bus shelter. We crossed the road to the bus stop and I checked the timetable against my watch.

  “There should be a number forty-one in about ten minutes. That will take us to Sea Mills Square. It takes about half an hour on the bus and then twenty minutes or so to walk.”

  “That gives us an hour to figure out how we’re going to take this guy down.” said Sally.

  “We better get off the bus near the Millhouse pub actually.” I said. “My mother does stuff at church some days so she’d be going near the square. We need to avoid the area. I mean going home in the day is a stupid idea really, she could be anywhere. If she sees me I’m going to get dragged home.”

  “We don’t have a choice though do we?” replied Sally. “We need to get to the house. Don’t tell me you don’t know how to sneak around in your own back yard?”

  Sally had that glint in her eye again and I smiled back at her, suddenly relishing the game.

  “Yeah that’s true, I know exactly how to get around Coombe Dingle undetected. We’ll cut through the woods by the Millhouse and come out on Grove Road. Mother’s not likely to drive down Grove Road but if she does we’ll just duck into a garden. If we walk up on the right-hand side there’s plenty of places to hide.”

  “O.K then, when we get to Coombe Dingle you’re in charge Hun.”

  We sat in the bus shelter, not more than a hundred and fifty feet from the bandstand, and waited for the bus. Sally told me that she’d seen the packages the man had posted at the post office. A couple to Berlin, one to Malaga, a few to places in the UK and one to Washington DC. We discussed the possible implications but really, we were just passing time. We both knew that the time for research was over. We were moving towards the end game. What we had learnt in the library had got us this far but wouldn’t help us any further. I don’t know about Sally but I was preparing my other self for release. Like a law man taking a cannibal out of prison to help him track a killer I needed to set some ground rules. I couldn’t just open the cage and walk away. I made him a deal. When we got off the bus I would set him free. He would get us to the house and deal with the man. He could have him, he could use me to quench his thirst for violence, but only him. There was to be no indiscriminate spree killing. I needed him focused on the task in hand. He agreed and I felt him swimming beneath my skin, readying himself to meld with my muscles and bone, to contaminate my mind in dark osmosis like an oil spill across a white beach.

  The bus arrived and we found seats half way down the bottom deck. I sat next to the window trying to act normal as the crawling inside me intensified. Sally sat next to me looking calm as ever. Her outward demeanour hadn’t changed much. I could see the darkness in her eyes but other than that she looked the same. There were only a few other people on the bus, an old lady with one of those two wheeled tartan pull along shopping bags and a couple of students arguing about the merits of algae in bio fuel production. The students were engrossed with each other and the old lady was reading Woman’s Weekly so I was fairly sure no-one would be listening to us.

  “How do you do it?” I asked, turning to Sally.

  “Do what Hun?” Sally replied quietly without turning her head.

  “How do you keep it all in?”

  She turned and studied me for a moment.

  “The darkness you mean?”

  “Yeah, how do you do it? You look so normal. I feel like it’s bursting out of me, like everyone can see it.”

  “Yeah I used to feel that too Hun. Before I figured it out it was a constant battle that I felt I was always losing. You feel like it’s stronger than you, right? That it can take over whenever it wants?”

  “Yes! That’s exactly it! I get so tired trying to control it, trying to stop it coming out.”

  “There’s no secret.” Sally said, “It’s symbiosis. The darkness can’t live in
the light for long, that’s why it lives inside you. It needs you. Without you the darkness burns up in the light, without the darkness you shrivel from malnourishment. You are two sides of the same coin. You exist for each other, you are partners and the same person all at once. Once you realise that neither one of you has all the power you’ll get along just fine.”

  “It’s that simple?”

  “It sure is. Try it. I can see the conflict in you right now. The two of you are fighting, close your eyes and talk to each other. Share your wants and needs, your fears and your fantasies. Get to know each other Hun, I’ll keep an eye out for our stop.”

  I did as Sally said. I leant back in the seat and closed my eye. The weak heat of the morning sun was magnified by the window and felt good on my eyelids. I sighed and as I let go he came to me. We talked. I apologised for keeping him locked away, he apologised for being too forceful too early on. Like a couple of tiger cubs, we circled each other trying to be loving but always wary. Eventually we started to trust each other and as he told me of his yearnings I laid bare my fears. We came to realise, just as Sally had said, that what each lacked the other had in abundance. By the time Sally nudged me we were enjoying rough and tumbling together, two tiger cubs with total love and total trust in each other.

  “I think this is us coming up.” Sally said pointing forward through the windscreen of the bus. I could see that we were passing Stoke Lodge playing fields and soon would be making our way downhill towards the shops on Shirehampton Road.

  “Yep, next stop,” I replied, “and thank you Sally, you were right.”

  “No problem Hun, feels better now right?”

  “Much better.” I said as I stood and pressed the bell.

  We got off the bus and I stopped just past the bus shelter. I closed my eyes again but this time I spoke aloud.

  “O.K. You need to get us to the house on Grove Road without anyone we know seeing us. You’re better at this than me. I’ll take care of the directions, you look out for threats.” I nodded to myself and opened my eyes. I looked at Sally who was regarding me with happy curiosity.

  “Seems like you boys are learning fast. You might want to work on not talking to yourself in public but it’s a good start!”

  I smiled at her, I didn’t care, I was feeling the best I had felt in years.

  “Let’s go.” I said and started off towards the pub. Sally smiled back and fell into stride beside me.

  We quickly crossed the road and ducked down into the lane that ran alongside the Millhouse towards the woods. It felt strange for me to be working with him and the conflict of trying to overturn years of embedded behaviour showed in my jerky movements. I was constantly looking around, behind and above me. I was moving in a sort of rapid creep, slightly hunched and ready to duck at any moment. Sally for her part seemed to be enjoying the scenery. As we moved along the path through the small woodland she reached out and touched the leaves and inhaled the perfume of the flowers and plants along the way. It annoyed me that she seemed so carefree. My body seemed to be trying to break away from me at any given opportunity and there she was sniffing flowers and practically skipping along! The truth is she was just more practiced at the dance than I was. She had combined with her demon long ago, the osmosis was complete, so she could move and think freely as one machine instead of two warring halves engaged in some uneasy ceasefire. We took the woodland path all the way to the Dingle car park, skirting the edge of the clearing under the White Bridge and tracing the river towards the road that ran past the car park and up to Grove Road. Just up the hill from the car park we took the small path that led to the rope swing and the hedges that sometimes gifted pornos. As we passed the rope swing I looked down on the car park and wondered if I would ever be here with my mates again. It turned out I wouldn’t. If I’d known for sure I would have taken a minute to gather a proper sensory memory of the place. I know what it looked like and I have memories of being there but I can’t remember what it smelt like or how the air felt. By the time we emerged from the half-hidden entrance to the path onto the bend at the bottom of Grove Road we had passed any number of dog walkers and joggers but no-one of interest. We had avoided the roads this far but now we had to get to the top of Grove Road without being seen by anyone that my mother or father knew. This was going to be especially tricky as we knew a lot of people who lived on that road. My quick calculation gave us four houses to be wary of before we even got the corner of Grove Ave. One of those four was Riley’s house and I knew that his mum walked their dog at least twice a day. I couldn’t afford to be caught by my best friend’s mum. From the corner, our corner where I met my mates to play in what seemed like another lifetime, the threat came from Harry and Garret’s houses on Grove Avenue and from the road itself. For some reason my mother liked to arrive at our house by driving down Arbutus Drive rather than up it. If she was driving home from Westbury or Southmead she would drive up Grove Avenue, turn up Grove Road and then down into Arbutus Drive and home.

  I stood at the end of the lane and scanned the landscape nervously. There was no way of knowing if there was any threat lurking in a pleasant Coombe Dingle garden that day. My feet were nailed to the spot but my head was still swivelling about madly like a broken lighthouse. Sally must have sensed the trouble I was having because she stepped out in front of me and casually looked up and down the road.

  “I don’t see anyone Hun.”

  “But they could just appear, if they’re going out or walking their dog. There’s a lane up there that goes into the woods, what if Riley’s mum comes out from there?”

  “We can’t second guess everything Hun. I know you’re worried about being caught but trust me. Trust the new friend inside you. If we see anyone I’ll tell them I’m a teacher and I’m bringing you home because you fell ill at school.”

  “And if they don’t believe you?” I protested.

  “Fuck ‘em Hun. You said you didn’t like your life anyway. Is that true? Are you truly prepared to step off the cliff and see where you land? Because if you’re not you need to go home now. This day, however it ends, will change our lives forever. I’m cool with that, I’m looking forward to it, are you?”

  I considered what Sally was saying. She was right. So what if someone saw me? Nothing would be the same after today. After today everyone would know about the murdered girl and the Sons of Charlemagne. There was no need to hide anymore. My demon wrapped himself around my heart and whispered in my ear to trust him. I tried, out of habit, to shrug him off and silence him but he was getting stronger. I had given him sustenance and now he was craving more. I wasn’t sure I could hold him back much longer. As I stared up Grove Road towards all the places I had tried to be normal in I knew it was time to set him free and the thought of it brought me a calmness. It wasn’t a relaxed calmness, more that feeling of weightlessness that comes from inevitability. The man from the office, The Son of Charlemagne, had undoubtedly seen my face and school badge on the camera outside his office. He could trace me easily so there was no escaping him. We had phoned him and set a meeting so at least we’d get some answers before he killed us or we killed him. Either way I wasn’t going home tonight. That certainty, that absolute at the eye of the tornado of possible truths swirling around us, that was what mattered. It was time to step off the cliff and see where I landed.

  “I’m ready.” I said. “Let’s finish this.”

  Just as it had been at the water tower we smiled at each other and set off with the swaggering strut of the movie hero. I may even have imagined an ACDC soundtrack as we went towards our destiny, I certainly do whenever I think of it now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  We saw no-one I knew as we strode up Grove Road. My senses were heightened, the result of two sets of eyes taking in the environment, and whilst I scanned the familiar setting he saw it all for the first time. I had grown accustomed to the leafy quiet of Coombe Dingle and so no longer fully appreciated the beauty of the place but I had never allowed him en
ough freedom to see the world clearly. Now he was there, sitting behind my eyes like a child in wonder at an aeroplane window. He was drinking in all the different greens, the textures of the natural world and the man made. He marvelled at the complexity of it all but saw in it a deeper simplicity. The houses, the gardens, the expensive curtains. The cars on Tarmac driveways, the kitchen extensions, the water features. It was all an illusion of control he said. It was all the trappings of an insecure king. There was no point to it other than a clawing for better status within a species that was terrified of itself. Humans had evolved opposable thumbs to create mutually assured destruction but couldn’t see the banality of that. We were warring beasts in nice jeans he said. Warring impotently against our neighbours with the weapons of consumption and status. The simplicity of it all was so clear for him to see and he urged me to end it all. The woodland that was contained by the infrastructure of man could be set free to reclaim its rightful reign. Let natural law thrive he told me as we walked, let the real beasts come out from the shadows and we will see the order of things. I couldn’t help thinking he was referring to himself as much as anything philosophical.